1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a positioning mechanism for a dental brace, and in particular to a self-locking and positioning device for a detachable dental brace.
2. The Prior Arts
Along with the raise of living standard and quality of life, people are paying more attention to their appearances. To have healthy, nice-looking, and well functioning teeth, dentition, and face, is essential to and very helpful in broadening social circles, increasing job opportunities, and enhancing self confidence. Therefore, tooth correction, dentition correction, and orthodontic treatment are getting very popular, to provide dental health required, and at the same time, encourage a person to make a pretty smile, to be shared with other people.
The conventional tooth correction and therapy require use of steel wires or rubber band to fix the correction line onto the dental brace. However, this could cause discomfort to the taste of the user, since his mouth is full of taste of rubber band. Later research develops a self-locking mechanism for a metal self-locking brace. Wherein, the brace main body and the upper cover are formed into a body, without the need of a rubber band. However, the mold required in this process is complicated, and its size is not easy to control; therefore, the yield is low, the mechanism is weak in construction, and is liable to be damaged during usage. Moreover, for different users, the tooth shapes are different, such that the brace requires different slot width, as such it would require to make modes of different sizes. In this respect, another type of slide cover brace is proposed, such as a Damon2 detention brace. Wherein, a built-in slidable open-close upper cover is designed to dispose on the slot of the brace main body, so as to fix the correction line into the slot. In addition, the upper cover is locked into position on the brace main body. Since unlike the previous approach of fixing the correction line onto the brace, the slidable cover brace allows the correction line to slide freely in the brace, so that the user feels more comfortable during the therapy, and the period of therapy is shortened. Yet for different slot width, the sliding cover brace still requires to provide various sizes of brace main body. Besides, the locking of the upper cover is less reliable, and is liable to slide open or burst open.
Therefore, presently, the design and performance o the dental brace is not quite satisfactory, and it has much room for improvement.